BlackBerry Torch vs. BlackBerry Bold

Overview

A BlackBerry with a touchscreen is far from a new concept (think BlackBerry Storm and Storm II). A BlackBerry with a great slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard and full touchscreen that dominates the front of the device, however, is new. The BlackBerry Torch is the first BlackBerry device to sport the newfangled design, and is also the fist BlackBerry to run BlackBerry OS 6 — an entirely new bake of BlackBerry’s operating system with an enhanced feature set and revamped user experience.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700, also expected to get BlackBerry OS6 in the coming months, bares the traditional BlackBerry design with a full QWERTY keyboard and crisp non-touch display. The BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry Bold 9700 are top-of-the-line BlackBerrys on AT&T’s network.

Key Differences

Operating system: As the first device running BlackBery’s OS 6, the Torch 9800 touts the highly anticipated latest bake of BlackBerry’s mobile operating system. With a web browsing experience on par with that of the latest Android-powered devices and the Apple iPhone, the Torch 9800 also offers an enhanced media interface, close integration with social networks, a revamped homescreen and more. While the BlackBerry Bold 9700′s traditional non-touchscreen design will limit some advanced OS 6 features including pinch-to-zoom (when browsing a website or viewing a photo, for example), the Bold is also expected to receive an OS 6 update in the coming months.

Power: All things considered, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 and Bold 9700 are among the most powerful BlackBerrys available. Both devices are equipped with relatively speedy 624MHz processors (these days, many of the highest-powered smartphones have 1GHz processors, though). The BlackBerry Torch, however, has 512MB of RAM while the Bold 9700 only offers 256MB of RAM. While this difference in RAM won’t make a dramatic difference in most day-to-day activities such as checking email, the difference will become apparent for power users running multiple applications simultaneously.

Display: The BlackBerry Torch offers a crisp and mid-sized touchscreen display (3.2″, 360 x 480 pixels). The Torch’s display is responsive, and provides multitouch support for uses including pinch-to-zoom. The BlackBery Bold 9700 is equipped with a smaller 2.4-inch, non-touchscreen display. Despite a smaller size, however, the Bold offers the same display resolution as that of the Torch.

Camera: While both the Bold and the Torch are capable of taking great pictures and decent video, the Torch touts a more powerful, higher resolution camera than that of the Bold. The Torch offers a 5-megapixel camera, while the Bold’s camera is 3.2-megapixels. Certainly, megapixels are not the measure of a camera’s quality, but the Torch arguably captures slightly better images than the Bold and is also able to record higher resolution video.

Keyboard: Both devices tout a comfortable physical QWERTY keyboard. While reminiscent of the Bold’s keyboard, the Torch’s keyboard slides from the bottom of the device, and is slightly more compact than that of the Bold. In addition to its slide-down physical keyboard, Torch users can also opt to use an on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard when the physical QWERTY keyboard is slid closed.

Storage space: Right out of the box, the BlackBerry Torch offers 8GB of total storage space for music, photos and videos (4GB on-board and pre-installed 2GB microSD card). The Bold 9700, however, only offers a pre-installed 2GB microSD card. Both devices can support up to a 32GB microSD card.

Wirefly’s cost: At the time of this comparison, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 is $99.99 with a new AT&T account and the same price for existing upgrade-eligible subscribers. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is FREE with a new AT&T account, and $29.99 for upgrading customers.

6 Responses to “BlackBerry Torch vs. BlackBerry Bold”

There is nothing really different bout it. For the fact that 9800 is torch, there is a huge difference haha. Also,9800 has a better camera and memory difference. Apart from that, bold 9700 is so much better than 9800 to me